The iPhone 4’s design reimagined

The glass back is nice in the hand but quite slippery on a table, meaning it can slide off if you’re not careful. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The X is a well designed, attractive smartphone that feels very well built. In fact, it’s one of the best made, nicest-feeling mid-range smartphones I have ever come across.

The fit and finish is excellent. The design is reminiscent of an iPhone 4, though bigger, but with the curved glass edges that you’d normally associate with a smartphone at least twice the price. It’s edges are ribbed metal, which makes it easier to grip than some smooth rivals.

At 6.9mm thick, it’s thinner than most of the high-end competition, let alone mid-range. For comparison an iPhone 6S is 7.1mm thick and a Samsung Galaxy S6 6.8mm thick. Almost all mid-range smartphones are at least 8mm thick.

It’s also relatively light, matching Samsung’s Galaxy S6 at 138g, and 5g lighter than an iPhone 6S. Equally it’s a good 10g to 15g lighter than most of its similarly priced competition.

The screen is excellent, particularly for the price. The 5in 1080p AMOLED screen has a pixel density of 441 pixels per inch, is crisp, colourful and has good viewing angles. It’s one of the best screens I’ve seen on a smartphone costing under £300, and isn’t that far off high-end rivals.

Underneath the screen sits three capacitive buttons for home, back and recently used apps. The buttons work fine, but it can be very difficult to see where they are. There’s no backlight, and only a faint grey-on-black circle or line for guidance.

Last year’s hardware

Two sims or one sim and a microSD card can be used at the same time. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The OnePlus X uses last year’s quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, which itself was just a speed-boosted version of 2013’s Snapdragon 800.

General performance is solid. The phone feels snappy, though not quite as quick as this year’s top-end smartphones. It feels considerably faster than a Moto G, for instance, but occasionally it lags when unlocking or when dismissing a notification.

Gaming performance was a mixed bag. Some simple games such as Smashy Road struggled and were difficult to play. Others such as Shooting Stars and Crossy Road ran fine, but the phone got quite hot. The phone struggled a little with graphically intensive games such as Asphalt 8, but it was still playable.

The OnePlus X lasted just over a day in my testing, coming off the charger at 7am and dying at around 9am the next day. That was with around three hours of browsing, one hour of music, 15 minutes of light gaming and a few photos, with ambient display set to off, which is default.

The phone has the capability to either have two sim cards installed at the same time for two separate numbers and providers, or one sim and one microSD card for adding extra storage.

There’s no NFC, fingerprint scanner or wireless charging, but the OnePlus X does have an FM radio.

Oxygen OS

The notification selector is one of the best bits about the OnePlus X, allowing users to quickly toggle between silent, priority and all notification modes. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The OnePlus X runs the company’s customised version of Android 5.1.1 Lollipop called Oxygen OS. It’s the same software as the OnePlus 2; unfortunately it’s not the latest version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

It’s like the standard Android experience, although it adds features such as app permissions settings and gestures. The best custom feature is a handy hardware notification switch on the side of the device that allows users to toggle between all notifications, priority only or total silence.

Camera

The camera app is poor, but using another app produced some decent photos in good light. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 13-megapixel camera is very good in bright lighting conditions, producing detailed images that are occasionally a bit dull. In low light it struggled, producing grainy shots lacking detail.

The 8-megapixel front-facing is great, producing good-looking selfies even in average lighting conditions such as that found in a fluorescent-lit office.

The OnePlus camera app is poor, however. I found it slow, taking HDR took a second or two and it took worse shots with the same camera than the Google Camera app.

Price

The OnePlus X in black (onyx) costs £199 direct from OnePlus. A ceramic version costing more will be available later. OnePlus operates an invite system to buy the X, which means it is not widely available. You can only buy it directly from OnePlus through its site.

Verdict

The OnePlus X is very good value. It’s well built, great-feeling and looks like a premium device, not one costing £200.

It lacks NFC, which is a pain for pairing devices, there’s no fingerprint scanner, wireless charging or USB-C, and it uses an old processor, but most of those features are not available on phones costing less than £350.

The camera is good, as is the screen, it lasts a good day per charge and it has dual-sim support, which is rare in the UK.

The biggest issue is actually buying one. As illustrated with the OnePlus 2, the invite system ends up being a massive, frustrating queue, and then there’s the question of support which, judging by the company’s forums, can be a bit hit and miss.